Treesearch

The stated goal of a recent book, The Ecological Importance of Mixed-Severity Fires: Nature’s Phoenix, edited by Dominick A. DellaSala and Chad T. Hansen, is to provide a global reference on the benefits of mixed- and high-severity fires. Note that the goal is not to provide an objective reference on the ecological aspects of mixed- and high-severity fires. Rather, the book appears to be mostly about convincing the reader that large severe fires occur in perhaps all forest types and provide important biological legacies and rare early-seral habitats and further that postfire logging...

Seedlings need the right amounts of sunlight, water and nutrients to live and grow into healthy trees. Different types of trees have different requirements, so seedlings will need planting sites that meet all of their requirements. For example, pine trees need full sun, a moderate amount of water and a certain combination of nutrients to grow into healthy trees. If you plant them in the shade, or they do not get enough water or the right nutrients, they will not do as well and maybe even die.

If the climate changes faster than the adaptation or migration capability of plants (Zhu et al. 2012; Gray and Hamann 2013), foresters and other land managers will face an overwhelming challenge. Growing trees that survive may become more important than growing perfectly formed trees (Hebda 2008) and may require selection of adapted plant materials and/or assisting the migration of plant populations (Peters and Darling 1985). Agencies, land managers, and foresters are being advised to acknowledge climate change in their operations, but current client demands, policies, and uncertainty...

Increasing aridity as a result of climate change is expected to exacerbate tree mortality. Reducing forest basal area – the cross-sectional area of tree stems within a given ground area – can decrease tree competition, which may reduce drought-induced tree mortality. However, neither the magnitude of expected mortality increases, nor the potential effectiveness of basal area reduction, has been quantified in dryland forests such as those of the drought-prone Southwest US. We used thousands of repeatedly measured forest plots to show that unusually warm and dry conditions are related to...

We present evidence that climatic change is an ongoing process and that forest tree populations are genetically differentiated for quantitative traits because of adaptation to specific habitats. We discuss in detail indications that the shift of suitable climatic habitat for forest tree species and populations, as a result of rapid climatic change, is likely to cause significant stresses to natural tree populations. Due to the physical limits of natural migration, tree populations will be unable to keep pace with the moving target that their suitable climatic habitat will become. The...

This paper develops an economic analysis of climate change impacts in the global forest sector. It illustrates how potential future climate change impacts can be integrated into a dynamic forestry economics model using data from a global dynamic vegetation model, theMC2model. The results suggest that climate change will cause forest outputs (such as timber) to increase by approximately 30% over the century. Aboveground forest carbon storage also is projected to increase, by approximately 26 Pg C by 2115, as a result of climate change, potentially providing an offset to emissions from other...

Wood-degrading brown rot fungi are essential recyclers of plant biomass in forest ecosystems. Their efficient cellulolytic systems, which have potential biotechnological applications, apparently depend on a combination of two mechanisms: lignocellulose oxidation (LOX) by reactive oxygen species (ROS) and polysaccharide hydrolysis by a limited set of glycoside hydrolases (GHs). Given that ROS are strongly oxidizing and nonselective, these two steps are likely segregated. A common hypothesis has been that brown rot fungi use a concentration gradient of chelated metal ions to confine ROS...

Verbenone (4,6,6-trimethylbicyclo[3.1.1]hept-3-en-2-one) is an antiaggregant of the mountain pine beetle, Dendroctonus ponderosae Hopkins (Coleoptera: Curculionidae, Scolytinae), the most notable forest insect pest in western North America. Several formulations are registered for tree protection, but efficacy is often inconsistent. We evaluated the efficacy of a newly registered formulation of (–)-verbenone (SPLAT® Verb, ISCA Technologies Inc., Riverside, CA, USA) for protecting individual lodgepole pines, Pinus contorta Dougl. ex Loud, ponderosa pines, P. ponderosa Dougl. ex Laws., and...

In Strangers on Familiar Soil, Edward Dallam Melillo shows how Californians and Chileans each have one foot on their land and the other connecting them through the Pacific Ocean. Melillo reframes our understanding of US history in the west and links the histories and destinies of Chile and California from 1786 to the current day. Contrary to popular belief, Melillo asserts that California was built by more than westward migration during expansionism in the US. It was also built by influences from Chileans or Chilenos whose country was the last stop after coming around the horn of South...

Many species living in deeper lentic ecosystems exhibit daily movements that cycle through the water column, generally referred to as diel vertical migration (DVM). In this study, we applied bioenergetics modelling to evaluate growth as a hypothesis to explain DVM by bull trout (Salvelinus confluentus) in a thermally stratified reservoir (Ross Lake, WA, USA) during the peak of thermal stratification in July and August. Bioenergetics model parameters were derived from observed vertical distributions of temperature, prey and bull trout. Field sampling confirmed that bull trout prey almost...